Faculty & Staff Accolades: April 2016
Accolades celebrate the professional achievements of the faculty and staff in the College of Science.
Robin Couch , Chemistry & Biochemistry, was awarded $158,512 by George Washington University, (National Institute of Health) for his work on Inhibition of MEP Pathway Isoprenoid Biosynthesis.
Arie Croitoru and Anthony Stefanidis, Geography and Geoinformation Science, Center for Geospatial Intelligence, and Andrew Crooks, Computational and Data Sciences, co-authored, along with their student, a paper on “Megacities through the Lens of Social Media”, published in the Journal of the Homeland Defense and Security Information Analysis Center (HDIAC). This group also co-authored a paper on “Crowdsourcing a Collective Sense of Place”, published in PloS One.
Paul Delamater and Tim Leslie, Geography and Geoinformation Science, along with Tony Yang, Health Administration and Policy, co-authored a research letter titled “California Senate Bill 277’s Grandfather Clause and Nonmedical Vaccine Exemptions in California, 2015-2022”, published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Liping Di, Geography and Geoinformation Science, Center for Spatial Information Science, received the INCITS Merits Award from the International Committee on Information Technology Standards (INCITS) for his leadership on and exceptional contributions to the development of national and international standards on geographic information. INCITS is the central U.S. forum dedicated to creating technology standards for the next generation of innovation. Di was also awarded $97,360 by Open Geospatial Consortium for his work on GMU CSISS Participation of OGC OWS-12 Initiative.
Thomas Duxbury, Physics and Astronomy, was awarded $250,026 by NASA Goodard Space Flight Center for his work on Mariner 69 Image/ SPICE Restoration, Catalog and Archive.
Harold Geller, Physics and Astronomy, participated in the Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC at the Washington Convention Center. Dr. Geller hosted officials from Fairfax County Park Authority at the GMU Observatory, and was the keynote speaker at the monthly meeting of the Potomac Geophysical Society, with a talk titled: “Sputnik Planum: A Geologically Active Impact Basin on Pluto.” Dr. Geller also gave a presentation at the Chesapeake Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers, at their regional meeting at Randolph Macon College, Ashland, Virginia with a talk titled: “Hands On/Hands Off: Two Approaches for Physics Fundamentals in Physics and Astronomy.” He also participated in a review panel for NASA Postdoctoral proposals, specifically in the area of astrobiology.
Dimitri Klimov, School of Systems Biology, was awarded $51,724 by Parabon Nanolabs, Inc. ( U.S. Army ) for his work on Porphyrin – DNA Origami Constructs as Bio-Scavengers for Organophosphates Phase II.
Lance Liotta, School of Systems Biology, Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine, received an award from the American Association of Cancer Research this week at the annual meeting. The award is for scientists with the most highly influential, highly cited, publications in cancer research over the past 75 years.
David Luther, Biology, had his research mentioned in an NSF article titled “Earth’s weird and wonderful animal models.” The article also mentions George Mason University’s Biology Department.
Chris Parsons, Environmental Science and Policy, was appointed the Membership Chair and a Board Member of the Society for Marine Mammalogy. He also co-authored the State of the Cetacean Environment Report 2015, which was published in the Journal of Cetacean Research and Management.
John Qu, Geography and Geoinformation Science, Environmental and Technology Center, was awarded $18,800 by the World Meteorological Organization for his work on Developing Climate-Related Services for Agriculture in Africa.
James Schwebach, Biology, was awarded $643,925 by the National Science Foundation for his work on the Rural and Diverse Student Scholars (RADSS) Program.
Dann Sklarew and Chris Parsons, Environmental Science and Policy, were expert panelists for the Ocean Frontiers event and film screening at the Arlington Campus on the 13th of April.
Anthony Stefanidis, Geography and Geoinformation Science, Center for Geospatial Intelligence, gave an invited talk to the director of the agency and agency personnel at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, on “Open-Source Geospatial Intelligence”. Stefanidis also, along with Peggy Agouris, College of Science, and others, co-authored a paper on “Ontology-driven Scene Interpretation based on Qualitative Spatial Reasoning,” published in GeoJournal.
Michael Summers, Physics and Astronomy, co-authored three papers that appeared in a special issue of Science that featured the New Horizons Pluto mission. The articles were titled “The atmosphere of Pluto as observed by New Horizons,” “The small satellites of Pluto as observed by New Horizons,” and “The Pluto system: Initial results from its exploration by New Horizons.” Summers gave an invited review talk on the New Horizons Pluto and Charon Atmospheric Results to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas on March 21. The New Horizons Team won the Aviation Week and Space Technology, Laureate Exploration Award (March 2016) and The New Horizons Team won the prestigious Edison Award for 2016 that was given at the awards conference at 7 World Trade Center in New York City on April 21.
Mark Uhen, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Science, co-authored the book Cetacean Paleobiology.
Monique Van Hoek, School of Systems Biology, presented a talk titled “Quorum Sensing in Francisella tularensis” at the 2016 ASM Biodefense meeting in Crystal City, VA. Van Hoek’s chapter titled “Diversity in Host Defense Antimicrobial Peptides” has been accepted for publication in “Host Defense Peptides and Their Potential as Therapeutic Agents.”
Ingrid Visseren-Hamakers, Environmental Science and Policy, along with others co-authored “Can Legality Verification enhance local rights to forest resources? Piloting the policy learning protocol in the Peruvian forest context,” presented in International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and Yale University’s Governance, Environment and Markets (GEM) Initiative. Visseren-Hamakers, along with others, co-authored Institutional effectiveness of REDD+ MRV: Countries progress in implementing technical guidelines and good governance requirements, published in Environmental Science & Policy.
Andrea Weeks, Biology, was awarded $16,390 by the National Science Foundation for her work on investigating the evolution of phalangerid marsupials on Sulawesi by incorporating morphology, molecular phylogenomics and biogeographic modeling.
